218. Whisky Galore! (1949)

Directed By Alexander Mackendrick


Synopsis

An island in the outer Hebrides runs out of Scotch! But as providence would have it a ship carrying 50,000 cases of the stuff has an accident off the coast. The islanders play a cat and mouse game with the authorities to get the whisky.

Review

This is the second Ealing comedy on the list, and even if it is not as good as Kind Hearts and Coronets it is still thoroughly enjoyable. The whole story surrounds a community of islanders parched for some whisky, and even if their characterisation is quite stereotypical it makes for quite an amusing film.

The film starts off in the format of a documentary on the islands, and this makes for quite an original framing for the story inside it. The documentary is quickly abandoned for the farce, but it is still an interesting device.

It is quite a short film, being under 1 hour 20 minutes, but it really didn't need any more time. The scenes of the final chase are quite successful in creating both laughs and suspense and the predicament the islanders find themselves in is funny enough to carry the whole film. The romantic sub-plots were a bit unnecessary, however.

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

In the United States, both the novel and the film were called Tight Little Island, as a ban existed at the time on using the names of alcoholic drinks in titles.

In France, the movie was retitled Whisky a Go Go, after which a Paris discothèque and later a West Hollywood nightclub were named, ultimately giving the English language the term go-go dancer.

Heroin Galore:

217. Adam's Rib (1949)

Directed By George Cukor

Synopsis

A couple of lawyers, meaning two lawyers who are married, take opposite sides of the same case when a woman shoots up her husband when she finds him with a lover. Hilarity ensues.

Review

This film is worth it for one reason, the marital fights. If you are married or live with someone as if you were then you know what fights are like and very rarely does film show them as they really are. And this is kind of it, at least in my experience. And for that this film is great.

Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn have the chemistry that comes from being the closest of friends and you can tell that these are two actors that love each-other and have had their number of tiffs. The performances are just great.

Then there is also the feminist element to the film which is dealt with in a more interesting and open way than in most films, that adds another layer of interest to the film. It isn't the funniest of comedies or the best of films but these are reasons enough to watch it.

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The defendant, Doris Attinger, when narrating to Amanda Bonner her version of the events on the day she shot her husband, describes recognizable symptoms of a dissociative episode. These include a divorcement from the reality of her actions and even psychogenic amnesia concerning her actual wounding of her husband. Given that, one might have expected Amanda to ask the jury for a verdict of not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity, because the defendant had been seized by an irresistible impulse.

Get it all on youtube, here's the first part:

216. Gun Crazy (1949)

Directed By Joseph H. Lewis

Synopsis

They who live by the gun die by the gun.

Review

This is one of those films that works better in concept and on the page than actually in execution. The execution is not bad, mind, but I think the production code kind of curbed it's potential.

This would be rectified later by Bonnie and Clyde which was one of the films to toll the bells for the Code, and it definitely owes a lot to this film. It is all here, the Eros and Thanatos, the love and death intermingled, the being aroused by weapons and the power that you feel while firing them. Feeling power over other human beings as an aphrodisiac.

But then it is always too subtle, too hidden to have the impact it could have, it pulls its punches, but it is not the fault of anyone in the film, it really seems like they wanted to take it further but were not allowed. Still, a very interesting film, right on the border between Film Noir and something else.

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Eric Henderson, film critic for Slant Magazine, wrote, "Lewis, through sheer force of will, turns the script's easy ways out ("I told you I'm a bad girl, didn't I?") into the essence of blunt, adolescent sexual flowering. Wild, wam-bam pacing (early heavy petting) eventually matures into the film's most memorable sequence: a one-take robbery sequence taken from the back seat of the getaway car, a stunning tour de force that's Lewis's cinematographic slow fuck."


Some guy's music with a video from Gun Crazy:

215. Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)

Directed By Robert Harner

Synopsis

A duchess runs away with an opera singer, and so her son gets left out of the succession. He plants to rectify the situation by eliminating everyone between him and the duchy. But hell hath no fury...

Review

This was one of the most brilliant films I've seen lately, well more to the point, ever! This was great, fabulous, fantastic, fantabulastic, gay adjectives fail me. The whole film is a delight from beginning to end. With one of the best anti-heros ever put together with what is probably Alec Guiness' best part, or parts as he plays 8 people here.

The film is very funny, but also very wrong, you find yourself rooting for this mass-murdering fuckhead and you know you shouldn't. But all the people he kills kind of have it coming, most are mean some are just upper class twits and others (i.e. the reverend) are just wasting precious oxygen.

Of course everything he does in the film is wrong, but he has such panache and humour while doing it that you can't help but empathise with him and that makes for a brilliant film. But the plot is not just flimsy black comedy, it is also an interesting comment on class. Alec Guiness plays all the upper class twits, even the woman, because they are all inbred, they are also rude, stupid and insensitive. The mass-murdering sociopath is smarter, more polite and has a better understanding of human emotion than any of them, maybe due to the merit of his mother having escaped with an Italian opera singer. Just amazing.

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The film is generally regarded as the one of the best made by Ealing Studios and appears on the Time magazine top 100 list as well as on the BFI Top 100 British films list. In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted Kind Hearts and Coronets the 25th greatest comedy film of all time. In 2004 the same magazine named it the 7th greatest British film of all time.

Three D'Ascoynes meet their fate:

214. The Heiress (1949)

Directed By William Wyler

Synopsis

Catherine is a very plain girl who has some problems socializing in the complicated system of New York 19th century high-class. She gets accosted by a very pretty guy who is basically gold-digging, she falls for it and when he realises she is losing her inheritance by eloping with him gives her the cold shoulder. 7 years later he comes back after her father has died and left her the inheritance she pretends to go along with him only to give him the cold shoulder. Hah!

Review

Olivia De Havilland always plays great damaged women whether in Gone With the Wind, The Snakepit or here. And it is just a joy to watch the evolution of her character to innocent and awkward to bitter and ruthless.

The acting is helped by amazing art direction reconstruction 19th century New York in a great way, the houses are full of stuff, it looks lived in. And then there's Aaron Copland's score, who being one of the best American composers of all time does not let the film down.

There is not much wrong with the fim, it is extremely well paced sweeping you along with it, all in all a pretty nifty film and if you like costume dramas it is definitely one to see.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

In his review in the New York Times, Bosley Crowther said the film "crackles with allusive life and fire in its tender and agonized telling of an extraordinarily characterful tale" and added, "Mr. Wyler . . . has given this somewhat austere drama an absorbing intimacy and a warming illusion of nearness that it did not have on the stage. He has brought the full-bodied people very closely and vividly to view, while maintaining the clarity and sharpness of their personalities, their emotions and their styles . . . The Heiress is one of the handsome, intense and adult dramas of the year."

TV Guide rates the film five out of a possible five stars and adds, "This powerful and compelling drama . . . owes its triumph to the deft hand of director William Wyler and a remarkable lead performance by Olivia de Havilland.

Time Out London calls the film "typically plush, painstaking and cold. . . . highly professional and heartless."

Channel 4 says of the performances, "de Havilland's portrayal . . . is spine-chilling . . . Clift brings a subtle ambiguity to one of his least interesting roles, and Richardson is also excellent."


The whole film is online, here's part 1:

213. Louisiana Story (1948)

Directed By Robert Flaherty

Synopsis

An oil company starts drilling for oil in a Louisiana Bayou, and it's peachy!

Review

Ok, one thing everyone must know before watchin this film is the simple factthat Flaherty was paid by the oil company to make this film, showing how unobtrusive oil drilling is.

Actually the film is not particularly successful at doing that at least to today's more educated audience about the dangers and problems of oil drilling, it didn't particularly convince me to want to have it done in my backyard.

On the plus side, however, it is brilliantly filmed by Flaherty, the scenes with the boy and his raccoon are particularly affecting. There is not, however, much in the way of a plot here, although the film does seem to be in the tradition of Italian Neo-Realism with the completely natural performances by the non-professional Cajun actors in the film. Worth watching but nothing to write home about.

Final Grade

7/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing, Motion Picture Story in 1948. In 1949, Virgil Thomson won the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his score to the film (which contains only one Cajun-styled piece). The film has more recently been deemed "culturally significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry

An example of the "acting":

212. The Treasure Of Sierra Madre (1948)

Directed By John Huston

Synopsis

Bogart and another guy are just hanging around a Mexican town getting more and more dissatisfied with the job opportunities. When they meet an old gold prospector they decide to take their chances mining for it. Greed drives them all a bit crazy, but one more than the others.

Review

This was definitely a very interesting film and probably the most violent film on the list after the implementation of the Production Code, the story is also a pretty stressful and well crafted one which leaves you a little unsatisfied in the end, but in a good way.

The whole film revolves around three characters really, all the rest is scenery so it would always live or die depending on their acting capabilities. Fortunately they pull it off greatly. Bogart has his best performance in a film up to this point and that by itself makes the film worth watching.

Then the film is eminently quotable, particularly the Badges scene, which is kind of representative of the quite xenophobic portrayal of Mexicans, even though the evil guy here ends up being an American. Still, one of the best thrillers in the list up until now. And remember kids, greed drives you MAD!

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

A few notable uncredited actors appear in the film. Director John Huston appears (see below) as does actor Robert Blake as a young boy selling lottery tickets.

In an opening cameo, director John Huston is pestered for money by one of the two main characters.

The most controversial cameo is Ann Sheridan. Sheridan, who was in Mexico at the time, allegedly did a cameo as a streetwalker. After Dobbs leaves the barbershop in Tampico, he spies a passing prostitute who returns his look. Seconds later, the woman is picked up again but this time in the distance. Some film goers and critics feel the woman looks nothing like Sheridan, but the DVD commentary for the film states that it is she. Many film internet sources, including IMDb, credit Sheridan for the part.

Co-star Tim Holt's father, Jack Holt, a star of silent and early sound Westerns and action films, makes a one-line appearance at the beginning of the film as one of the men down on their luck.

Bruce Bennett, who plays a key role as a rival prospector, had portrayed Tarzan in Edgar Rice Burroughs's own 1935 film version, under Bennett's birth name of Herman Brix. Bennett, who celebrated his hundredth birthday on May 19, 2006, died February 24, 2007.

Badges?:

211. The Red Shoes (1948)

Directed By Powell & Pressburger

Synopsis

Victoria Page loves to dance, Lermontov loves to see her dance, Julian Craster wants to bone her. Lermontov doesn't want her to be boned because he kind of likes her. He fires them both, and after a while tries to hire her back, she is hired back and faced with choosing between dancing and Julian swan dives into the path of a fucking train! Holy Anna Karenina Batman!

Review

If there is one think you can trust in this life it is the fact that the colour films of Powell and Pressburger are a feast for the senses, either Colonel Blimp, Black Narcissus or this one, they are all beautiful films to look at. Then they are more or less successful in terms of story and this one even though it is one of the most impressive visually is one of the least interesting story wise.

This is not to say it isn't a very enjoyable film, it is, it keeps your interest for over 2 hours and it has excellent characters, particularly Lermontov, played brilliantly by Anton Wallbrook who also has one of the best wardrobes of any man in 40's cinema. He looks like a later Mediterranean film star, all dark glasses and perfectly tailored suits. The main character of the film is not that interesting, however, the most interesting thing she does is commit suicide.

But the film is truly beautiful, the Red Shoes scene, the ballet which parallels the main dancer's life is amazing being an early template for the fantasy scene in American In Paris and many other musicals to come. Of course Busby Berkeley already had the big set scenes but they didn't really tell a story, here the film is encapsulated in a dancing scene. The soundtrack is also pretty amazing and the film lives because of the quality of music and dancing in it, simply beautiful.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The ballet roughly follows the Hans Christian Andersen story it is based on. A young woman sees in the window of a shop a pair of red shoes, which are offered to her by the demonic shoemaker. She puts them on and begins to dance with her boyfriend. They go to a carnival, where she seemingly forgets about him as she dances with every man she comes across. Her boyfriend is carried away and nothing is left of him but his image on a piece of cellophane, which she tramples.

She attempts to return home to her mother, but the red shoes, controlled by the shoemaker, keep her dancing. Finally she falls into the netherworld of the demimonde, where she dances with a piece of newspaper which turns briefly into her boyfriend. She is beset by grotesque creatures, including the shoemaker, who converge upon her in a manner reminiscent of The Rite of Spring, but who abruptly disappear, leaving her alone. No matter where she flees, the shoes refuse to stop dancing.

Near death from exhaustion, clothed in rags, she finds herself in front of the church where a funeral is in progress. Her boyfriend, now a priest, offers to help her. She motions to him to take the shoes off, and as he does so, she dies. He carries her into the church, and the shoemaker retrieves the shoes, to be offered to his next victim.

The ballet was choreographed by Robert Helpmann, who plays the role of the lead dancer of the Ballet Lemontov and danced the part of the boyfriend, with Léonide Massine creating his own movement for his role as the shoemaker. (Both Helpmann and Massine were major stars of the ballet world.) The music is an original score by Brian Easdale, which he also arranged and conducted.


First part of the Ballet Scene:

210. The Paleface (1948)

Synopsis

Calamity Jane is released from prison on the condition that she makes a job for the federal government. To keep up appearances she gets married to hapless dentist Bob Hope... and then... oh who gives a shit?

Review

The most fascinating thing about this film is why it was included in the list. Colour me puzzled. And curiously by the description of the film in the book even whoever selected it for the list can't seem to find any positive points.

It is not even a good film to wank to as Jane Russell's boobs are nowhere near as prominent as they should be in order to carry her shit acting.

Mediocre Sunday afternoon fare, and fortunately most Native Americans are dead so they don't have to see the travesty that their culture is subjected to here.

Final Grade

5/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Some consider the 1952 sequel, Son of Paleface, also starring Bob Hope and Jane Russell, to be a superior film.

In 1967, actor Don Knotts remade the film as The Shakiest Gun in the West.

Bob Hope sings Buttons & Bows:

209. The Lady From Shanghai (1948)

Directed By Orson Welles

Synopsis

Hell, just watch it. It is much more difficult to explain than actually see it... yes it is one of those.

Review

This is a really great film, with that deft touch by Welles which makes it even better. This film has suffered from a lot of criticism, but the things that people have criticised the film for are actually some of my favourite things about it. It has, for example, been said that the style is too wordy, but I love a good Welles monologue, it was criticized at the time for having made Rita Hayworth cut and dye her hair, I think it definitely suits her character. It was criticised for being too flashy and therefore distracting from the overly complex plot, I think it enhances it.

Actually I think the problem with those criticisms is a chronological one, the film is actually surprisingly modern and therefore has loads of stuff happening in the background, the plot is disjointed and demands a bit of you, it is a bit more like Memento than any film of the 40's with a kind of surreal quality of not getting exactly what's going on, neither the viewer or the main character until the very end.

Welles makes a great job writing it, it is just a joy to get his monologues which of course don't sound natural, but sound great... only Welles doesn't sound so great with his put on Irish accent heh, it is quite funny really. And then there's the final scene with the mirrors. Great film.

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

How the film came about from Wikipedia:

In the summer of 1946, Welles was directing a musical stage version of Around the World in Eighty Days, with a comedic and ironic rewriting of the Jules Verne novel by Welles, incidental music and songs by Cole Porter, and production by Mike Todd, who would later produce the successful film version with David Niven.

When Todd pulled out from the lavish and expensive production, Welles supported the finances himself. When he ran out of money at one point, he urgently needed $55,000 to release some costumes which were being held, he convinced Columbia Pictures president Harry Cohn to send him the money to continue the show, and in exchange Welles promised to write, produce, direct and star in a film for Cohn for no further fee. On the spur of the moment he suggested the film be based on the book a girl in the theatre boxoffice happened to be reading at the time he was calling Cohn, which Welles had never read.

Mirror room:

208. The Snake Pit (1948)

Directed By Anatole Litvak

Synopsis

Woman get married and starts going all weird like, is put into asylum, hilarity ensues.

Review

This is obviously not the first treatment of mental illness in cinema, we have had on this list at least two important films featuring it, Spellbound and Secret Behind the Door. Where this film contrasts with those is the fact that it finally feels like an adult treatment of the subject.

This isn't all explained by some simple "mother hatred" thing, it shows mental illness as a complex thing composed of a variety of factors which come together to create some sort of instability in the patient.

Olivia de Havilland is excellent in this and a crazy lady that gets better and worse like a pendulum until she gets into some kind of road to recovery. Her motivations are complex and the character is immediately sympathetic. This is the great beggining of "asylum films" going on to Shock Corridor and eventually Girl, Interrupted, which shouldn't really be mentioned in the same sentence as the two older films, but hey.

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Gene Tierney was the first choice to play Virginia Stuart Cunningham, but was replaced by DeHavilland when she became pregnant.

The full film is on youtube, here is part I:

207. Rope (1948)

Directed By Alfred Hitchcock

Synopsis

Perfect Murder My Ass.

Review

Hitchcock is a nifty director, and he decides here to air his genius by filming a film in full reels, meaning it takes about 10 minutes between each cut, so there are only about 9 cuts in the whole film. Some editor was out of a job for this film.

Now think about it, this is 1948 and Hitchcock never one to do the easy thing chose to film it in colour, meaning that he was using cameras that looked like tanks and that you couldn't really move about, so you kind of have to move the set around it! But if the film was only about these technicalities it would be quite bad, but it isn't it has a great plot and some great acting in it.

The plot could be boiled down to the simple message of "Nietzsche is dangerous thinkin'" and a couple of boys attempt to commit the perfect murder only to be foiled by that pesky Jimmy Stewart, and they would have gotten away with it too. What is lovely here are the touches of the grotesque and the macabre that Hitchcock enjoyed adding and the very light subtext of homosexuality, the two boys live together after all and none of them has any other relationships or interest in them. And it is freaking ghoulish. A great film in all respects and one you must see.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

One example is how Hitchcock makes plain the sexual nature of their relationship, as well as each character’s role, at the very start of the movie with the first lines of dialogue spoken. Directly after the murder, while both men are standing, Brandon wants to get moving to arrange the party — but Phillip, shocked and drained by what they have just done, asks if they can’t "just stay like this for a while." Brandon agrees, then lights a cigarette. This mirroring of post-sexual dialog is immediately identifiable, and also indicates that Phillip’s role in the relationship is that of the female submissive archetype, while Brandon’s is that of the dominant male.

Scene where Stewart figures it all out:

206. Red River (1948)

Directed By Howard Hawks

Synopsis

John Wayne loses his girlfriend, but as luck would have it he gets a young boy the next day! They grow up to be big cattle ranchers but with nowhere to sell the cattle, so they take it up to Missouri or do they!

Review

I love me a good Western and this is a great one, I am not a particular fan of John Wayne but the young Montgomery Clift looking like a young, man-sized Tom Cruise makes up for it and frankly John Wayne is pretty good in it too.

The film throws you some interesting and original twists, the fact that John Wayne becomes the menace instead of the hero later on in the film is one of those thing you don't really expect at the start of it. And is a pretty nifty twist to the story.

The relationship between the two main characters is also fascinating, in a very manly way. Speaking of which there must be fewer films which are so clearly for boys and that's fine with me, girls can have Bridget Jones when they aren't reading Jane Austen and I'll have John Wayne when I am not reading Hemingway.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Red River was filmed in 1946 but not released until September 30, 1948, reportedly because Howard Hughes threatened legal action against Hawks and United Artists, claiming Red River was too similar to Hughes' film The Outlaw starring Jane Russell. This, by the way, is one of the few pre-1951 UA films that the studio continues to own (sister company MGM now handles distribution).

SPOILER SPOILER:

205. Xiao Cheng Zhi Chun (Spring in a Small Town) (1948)

Directed By Fei Mu

Synopsis

A woman lives in a crumbling house with her sickly husband and his young sister, a friend of her husband comes to visit and he happens to be an old lover of the woman, and they still love each other, a depressive triangle starts with the woman torn between love and pity, the lover between love and friendship and the husband between selfishness and love.

Review

This is a very impressive film, and if you know any Chinese cinema you can tell how this has resounded deeply up until today, Wong Kar-Wai is a good example of someone who creates similar atmospheres and themes, particularly in In The Mood For Love.

The film immediately starts off being unique with the wistful voice over of the wife which leads us through the film, and then it is also interesting in the fact that there is really no antagonism, no villains and no heroes, all the conflict comes from the inescapable conditions of life, created by the passage of time and the particular life situations of each of the characters.

The whole atmosphere of the film is one of quiet despair and indecision nothing much happens throughout the film but the internal drama of each of the characters is so well developed that it carries you through to the end, where everything ends very much where you started but after the characters have gained some better knowledge of their motivations and needs.

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Unfortunately, because of this apparent lack of "political" grounding, Spring in a Small Town was rejected by the Communists as rightist or reactionary, and was quickly forgotten by those on the mainland following the Communist victory in China in 1949. Beginning in the 1980s, however, the film had a resurgance in popularity after languishing in Communist archives for several decades. Today it is considered one of the classics of Chinese film, with the Hong Kong Film Awards Association naming it the greatest Chinese film ever made in 2005. In 2002, the film was remade by Tian Zhuangzhuang as Springtime in a Small Town.

10 minutes of the Remake, it all seems to be on youtube... but don't tell anyone: